Research Blog
12September2018

Hidden secrets of our new User Interface

Hopefully you've started exploring our incredible new User Interface, but there's a lot of hidden power and tools that aren't immediately obvious. Here we highlight 10 of the nifty new additions to your toolkit:

1. One-click page-break deletion: Have you spotted it yet? The page-break deletion icon that shows between pages of your survey? It looks like this: . Just click on this icon if you want to delete the page break and merge their contents into one page. No more hunting around in the action menus.

2. Re-order survey pages tool: Just click on this icon in the orange edit toolbar: and a drag-and-drop interface will appear showing the titles of all your pages. Just drag and drop them until you have them in a new order and save. Update and preview your survey to see how everything has fallen into place afresh.

3. The new positional compass: This one is a serious boon for finding your way around very long surveys – a little compass at the right of the editing workspace that lets you go directly to the top of the survey, the bottom of the survey, or the point in it where you were last working. Go to the top by clicking the up-arrow icon, go to the bottom using the down-arrow icon, and go to where you were last working by clicking on the compass icon.

4. Do-it-yourself Friendly URLs: Friendly survey URLs are useful if you're promoting your survey on a non-digital platform – they're easier to type into the browser. But you can now organise one yourself rather than go through the Helpdesk. Under the Details tab of the Survey Properties, simply click on the "Get Friendly URL" link.

5. Question search for re-use: Advanced users of Demographix find this hidden tool really useful – to search all your surveys for a specific word in question text/answers. For example, you remember an answer set with a full list of car makers, so pop the word "Peugeot" in the search box and all the questions in your account with this word in them will be displayed. Each has an option to add your selected question to your Scrapbook, so you can then add it into another survey. Because the "Find questions" function is related to the Scrapbook, we've placed it beneath the Scrapbook option on the Shared Resources menu.

6. Ranking question change: We have now removed our old ranking question format, but you still have available a Card sort ranking question, which is in fact a far easier format for respondents to use. Rather than moving options above a line, as previously, respondents now sort text or images into a container where they rank them by drag-and-drop. The same ranking results table will appear in the Analysis of Responses.

7. Options for changing survey status: Many of the control functions are now available in more than one place – making it easier than ever to change a survey status. For example, to publish a survey you can either click on the status button at top left of the edit screen (shown top in our image), click on the Publish button above the orange edit toolbar (shown centre), or go to the Survey Properties and select it on the Details tab (shown bottom). Closing and archiving surveys are also found as options on the Survey Actions menu of a live survey.

8. Where to give permissions: As in Hint 7 above, there are now multiple ways to give other users in your account access to your survey. You may, for instance, want to give a Colleague login the ability to edit your survey, alter the appearance, or access the data toolset for it. These are called Permissions, and you access the Permissions pop-up via the Survey Actions menu when you click on a survey title; or by clicking on the permissions icon on the orange edit tollbar; or via the Survey Properties / Summary tab.

9. Upload images within question editor: There's no longer any need to come out of your survey edit mode to access the Media Library to upload an image. This can be done within an image question or image item while editing your survey. Look for the MANAGE IMAGES link in the Question/Item editor.

10. Live survey changes: Once a survey is published and taking in data, you haven't been able to make changes to it in the past. But that's all changed. We now let you edit a live survey to change: text items, the text of questions (but not the answer list – contact Helpdesk to discuss if this is needed); change images shown in the survey; alter validation/conditionality, and change some Survey Property controls. Save your changes, then update pages and preview to check them. The new UI certainly puts more power at your fingertips!